March 18-29, 2015

Fort Buchanan

North American Premiere | Q&A with director Benjamin Crotty

Shot in richly textured 16mm, Benjamin Crotty’s queer soap opera chronicles the tragicomic plight of frail, lonely Roger, who seeks comfort and companionship from the sexually frustrated army wives in a remote military post in the woods while his husband carries out a mission in Djibouti. Screening with Taprobana (Gabriel Abrantes, 24m).

Screenings:

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Walter Reade

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MoMA - Titus 1

Los Hongos

Q&A with director Oscar Ruiz Navia

Full of vibrant color and great music, Los Hongos is a charming and surprising coming-of-age film that follows Cali street artists Ras and Calvin, good friends from disparate class backgrounds who band together with other artists to paint a tribute to the student protestors of the Arab Spring.

Screenings:

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MoMA - Titus 1

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Walter Reade

Mercuriales

U.S. Premiere

This freely inventive breakthrough work from ambitious young French director Virgil Vernier is a radical experiment in form that also lavishes tender attention on its characters. As two young receptionists in the titular Paris high-rise drift from one situation to the next, Vernier’s visual style grows ever more surprising and beautiful.

Screenings:

Dog Lady

This indelible and quietly haunting study of an enigmatic, nameless woman living with a loyal pack of stray dogs in silent, self-imposed exile on the edge of Buenos Aires follows her across four seasons with an attentive and sympathetic eye, culminating in an unforgettable extended final shot.

Screenings:

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MoMA - Titus 1

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Walter Reade

Line of Credit

North American Premiere | Q&A with director Salomé Alexi

Nino, a fortysomething woman with a small shop in Tbilisi, grew up without thinking about the complexities of finance. But when the money becomes tight, Nino goes about taking loan after loan, but even as the situation gets out of hand, Salomé Alexi maintains a beautifully light, comedic tone in her feature-film debut.

Screenings:

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MoMA - Titus 1

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Walter Reade

Court

U.S. Premiere | Q&A with director Chaitanya Tamhane

Chaitanya Tamhane’s absurdist portrait of injustice, caste prejudice, and venal politics in contemporary India won top prizes at the Venice and Mumbai film festivals and features a brilliant ensemble cast of professional and nonprofessional actors who capture the rich complexity and contradictions of Indian society.

Screenings:

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Walter Reade

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MoMA - Titus 1

The Great Man

U.S. Premiere | Q&A with director Sarah Leonor

The intrinsic struggle between paternal/fraternal responsibility and unfettered mobility takes on a deeply moving dimension in Sarah Leonor’s by turns heartbreaking and empowering sophomore feature, which follows two French Legionnaires at the end of their posting in Afghanistan.

Screenings:

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MoMA - Titus 1

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Walter Reade

Entertainment

Closing Night | Q&A with director Rick Alverson

The Comedy director Rick Alverson teams with comedians Gregg Turkington (better known as Neil Hamburger) and Tim Heidecker for a hallucinatory journey to the end of the night. A washed-up comic on tour with a teenage mime works his way across the Mojave Desert on a one-of-a-kind odyssey that is by turns mortifying and beautiful, bewildering and absorbing.

Screenings:

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MoMA - Titus 1

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Walter Reade

Listen to Me Marlon

Q&A with director Stevan Riley

Documentarian Stevan Riley explores the on- and off-screen lives of Marlon Brando, using a vast trove of audio recordings made by the actor himself to allow Brando to tell his own story, filled with bones to pick, strong opinions, and fascinating traces of one of the most alluring figures in the history of cinema.

Screenings:

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Walter Reade

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MoMA - Titus 1

The Tribe

Set it in a spartan boarding school for deaf and mute coeds and told entirely through un-subtitled sign language, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize–winning feature debut overcomes what may sound like impossible obstacles to tell a grim but uncannily immersive story of exploitation and brutality in a dog-eat-dog world, delivering a high-school movie you won’t forget.

Screenings:

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MoMA - Titus 1

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Walter Reade

Goodnight Mommy

Q&A with directors Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz

The dread of parental abandonment is trumped by the terror of menacing spawn in Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s exquisite, cerebral horror-thriller. Produced by Ulrich Seidl, Goodnight Mommy is a heartbreaking tale of love and loss wrapped in one of the scariest films of the year.

Screenings:

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Walter Reade

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MoMA - Titus 1

Christmas, Again

Q&A with director Charles Poekel

Writer-director Charles Poekel has transformed three years of “fieldwork” peddling Christmas trees on the streets of New York into a sharply observed and wistfully comic portrait of urban loneliness and companionship, shot on 16mm by acclaimed cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Listen Up Philip, Heaven Knows What). Screening with Going Out (Ted Fendt, 8m).

Screenings:

Rick Alverson’s black comedy Entertainment screens as the Closing Night selection of the 44th New Director/New Films this Sunday, March 29. Alverson discusses how growing up as an introvert left him with a fascination for how people communicate.

Following its buzzed-about premiere at Sundance, Listen to Me Marlon, Stevan Riley’s intimate portrait of legendary actor Marlon Brando, screens as part of the 44th New Directors/New Films, which continues through Sunday.

Salomé Alexi’s feature-film debut, Line of Credit, is a gently humorous story about an indebted shopkeeper trying to stay afloat. In her comments about the feature, screening in the 44th New Directors/New Films, Alexi talks finding inspiration in painting, and the trials of adapting to capitalism in a Soviet society.

New Directors/New Films is presented by The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is supported by Kenneth Kuchin, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, The Film Society's New Wave, The New York Times, American Airlines, and Stella Artois.